To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.

Unamuno’s aphorism treats habit not as harmless routine but as a quiet erosion of personhood. To “fall into” a habit suggests passivity: one stops choosing and begins merely repeating. In that sense, habit can resemble a small death—an incremental surrender of consciousness, freedom, and creative self-renewal. The line fits Unamuno’s broader existential preoccupations: the struggle to remain vividly alive, inwardly awake, and spiritually restless rather than settling into complacent patterns. It also implies an ethical warning: when actions become automatic, responsibility and authenticity can thin out, and the self risks becoming a mechanism rather than a living, striving subject.